Packaging XLibre in NixOS

[affhp]

I have spent a little bit of time on it, but still not even past the first step because of skill issue (I am not a programmer).
So I open this for discussion.

Maybe I just start it by sharing what I think and have done, please correct me if I am wrong.

First , all the xorg packages are group in the big attribute set xorg
i.e. https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=25.05&from=0&size=50&sort=relevance&type=packages&query=xorg
And I am going to target xorg.xorgserver.

That xorg is defined here in pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix

The code is hard to understand for me. But In the code, at least I can see it is calling the file pkgs/servers/x11/xorg/default.nix and pkgs/servers/x11/xorg/overrides.nix, so I looked into it.

I found that xorg.xorgserver is packaged here in pkgs/servers/x11/xorg/default.nix

I cloned the repo onto my computer. Then I installed nurl, a tool to generate fetcher call. I ran this command:

nurl https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver xlibre-xserver-25.0.0.4

to produce a output that can be used to replace src of xorg.xorgserver. Then I add fetchFromGitHub (produced by nurl) in this position as dependency.

Then within the repo directory I run nix build .#xorg.xorgserver. It prompt an error about patches cannot be applied.
I found the patch here in pkgs/servers/x11/xorg/overrides.nix and disabled it.

I run nix build .#xorg.xorgserver again within the repo directory, it complain

> no configure script, doing nothing
> no Makefile or custom buildPhase, doing nothing
> no Makefile or custom installPhase, doing nothing

Then I looked into source code of xlibre and xorg, the file of configure and configure.ac is missing in xlibre. Seems like the code in pkgs/servers/x11/xorg/default.nix xorg.xorgserver section rely on those files to build xorg.xorgserver. I looked into some example like AUR and some youtube tutorial, they are using a command meson to configure and compile, some use both meson and ninja. So some nix code need to be changed in the xorg.xorgserver to use those tool to build it.

[keegandahm]

I'm also working on packaging Xlibre, and I've so far been able to boot a VM with xlibre.

Xlibre has seemingly moved to Meson as a build system. I was able to get it to configure and build correctly by adding this to my copy of the xorg overrides.nix:

# Some of these nativeBuildInputs are almost certainly not needed here
nativeBuildInputs = [ meson pkg-config autoconf automake libtool cmake udev ninja libdrm ];
mesonFlags = [
  "-Dxcsecurity=true"
  "-Dxephyr=true"
  "-Ddefault_font_path="
  "-Dlocalstatedir=/var"
  "-Dxkb_bin_dir=${xorg.xkbcomp}/bin"
  "-Dxkb_output_dir=$out/share/X11/xkb/compiled"
  "-Dxkb_dir=${xorg.xkeyboardconfig}/share/X11/xkb"
];

Just adding meson to the native build inputs seems to be enough for it to switch to the different build system.

[callmetango]

@keegandahm Thank you for the effort to bring XLibre to NixOS. We just have expanded our support for bringing XLibre on Other Distributions · X11Libre · Discussion X11Libre/misc#212. You may want to have a look at that too.

And: Nice screenshot! Would you like to share it in Liberated Screens · X11Libre · Discussion X11Libre/misc#211?

[takagemacoed]

Hi @keegandahm! Do you know what are the drivers required to run on VM?
Also are you able to run it on real hardware?

[takagemacoed]

Try this:
xlibre-overlay: https://codeberg.org/takagemacoed/xlibre-overlay

I call it experimental just because I only have two x86_64-linux bare metal to test it out. It should be safe to use.

[affhp]

Wow!
Just 4 more line of code in my existing NixOS flake configuation, nixos-rebuild, xlibre installed.

[callmetango]

Very nice to see you all working on XLibre packages for NixOS! If you need some support from the XLibre team just let me know. We could provide e.g. a category in the XLibre discussions like X11Libre Xlibre On Arch Linux · Discussions · GitHub with a welcome page like this Welcome to XLibre on Arch Linux! · X11Libre · Discussion X11Libre/packaging#4 and the other distribution specific categories.

[callmetango]

I updated the status section about its status on x86_64-linux and aarch64-linux. I think it is usable by others. However more test needs to be done on aarch64-linux. I think it is pretty safe to use because of the atomic rollback system on NixOS. Users can rollback the system to previous working state in bootloader if the GUI is broken by the successfully applied overlay. If the overlay failed to apply, it just failed to update the system anyway, and the system is still in the previous working state, because NixOS system update is atomic.

That sounds good! I will add a discussion category.

[callmetango]

Also since packaging is new to me, may I ask what is the preferred way to keep tracking the packages and drivers when they have new release?

Sure! You can subscribe to releases by the Github native notifications as well as via the Atom newsfeed. Please see How to subscribe to releases on Github « Robin's Blog. There are also more Atom newsfeeds for tags etc. as detailed in RSS feeds for your Github releases, tags and activity | by Ronalds Vilcins | Medium.

[callmetango]

That sounds good! I will add a discussion category.

Done. X11Libre Xlibre On Nixos · Discussions · GitHub. I also updated Are We XLibre Yet? · X11Libre/xserver Wiki.

[fredvs]

For info, in https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/wiki/Are-We-XLibre-Yet%3F

Third-party support: NixOS

...

No support: NixOS

???

[callmetango]

Yes, no support by the NixOS maintainers, but full support by @takagemacoed 's third party repository.

Ps. You could also use the Wiki-Page "Are We XLibre Yet?" · X11Libre · Discussion X11Libre/misc#268 for anything related to the wiki page.